What Does an Effective Sales Presentation Entail?

While sales are the focus of any salesperson's career, they can
often get very complicated. When presenting your product or service to prospects,
it is important to understand that not all prospects are the same. They will
respond differently to the price when comparing it to the value that they get.
Few sales will ever be made unless you have the ability to convince the
prospect that the value of what you are selling outweighs the cost. However,
there are certain aspects of your presentation that you must pay attention to.

Planning your presentation
It is important to ensure that you prepare adequately for your presentation as
this will help you be organized, prepared and confident. Preparing for the
presentation involves finding out about the prospect so you can customize the
presentation appropriately. For instance, it is important to determine the
dominant value of your product or service for the prospect and plan your
presentation to stress this value.

Ingredients for an effective presentation
It helps to think of the presentation as a combination of content, style and
rapport. When any of these ingredients are missing from your presentation, you
decrease your chances of making the sale. Having adequate content requires that
you have valuable facts about the product's usefulness, but your presentation
will not be effective if you do not build rapport or deliver your presentation
in a style that the prospect will find appealing.

Interactive presentation
An effective presentation is one that is interactive, which means that you must
involve the prospect at every point of the presentation. One of the ways that
you can do this is to ask the prospect questions that explore his or her needs
and then propose workable solutions. Ensure that you are concise and factual as
customers feel more comfortable buying from a person they feel is
straightforward and honest. It is also important to maintain your prospect's
attention. For instance, allowing him or her to have physical contact with the
product or physically demonstrating how it works should help lead to a sale.

Take your time
There are numerous ways in which you can make a sale, but it is important to
take your time during the presentation. When a customer feels rushed to make a
decision, this compromises the quality of your presentation and you will likely
lose the sale. If you have other time commitments, it would be better to
postpone the presentation altogether. Only when the customer indicates that he
or she is ready to make a purchase should you ask for a sale.